Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

uncommonapps.nyc

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 205 posts

Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

#21

Post by pinkmuffinere »

dabluck wrote: post #9
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #5

One suggestion — when you have an unsatisfying answer for a customer like “I can’t reproduce that”, or “I won’t build that feature”, the customer may not appreciate the amount of effort you have invested in that decision. A 30 minute phone call/video call may communicate more effectively the depth of care you have. Even if you convey the same information, people _love_ talking to the owner/founder, it is a very stron…

Thanks it's hard to find time to do 30 minute calls as this is a glorified side project, but I actually had the same idea and recorded some calls with customers for public consumption as I thought might improve some of this communication, but I never got around to editing it and wasn't sure if the content would be compelling. Definitely feels like some form of video might be superior vs email, which is easiest in som…

> this is a glorified side project

Personally I'd guess this is a big part of the issue. If this is a glorified side project, you really don't / can't care _too_ much about everything. I don't mean that as a criticism, it's just if you have little time to give the product will improve little, and the customers will get a just-ok experience. It's not surprising that translates poorly to customers. People like devotion; luke-warm commitment is dissapointing.

Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

#22

Post by dabluck »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #21
dabluck wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks it's hard to find time to do 30 minute calls as this is a glorified side project, but I actually had the same idea and recorded some calls with customers for public consumption as I thought might improve some of this communication, but I never got around to editing it and wasn't sure if the content would be compelling. Definitely feels like some form of video might be superior vs email, which is easiest in som…

> this is a glorified side project Personally I'd guess this is a big part of the issue. If this is a glorified side project, you really don't / can't care _too_ much about everything. I don't mean that as a criticism, it's just if you have little time to give the product will improve little, and the customers will get a just-ok experience. It's not surprising that translates poorly to customers. People like devotion…

On the contrary I care a great deal, an unreasonable amount really, but since it isn't my primary gig my time is limited and I have to try to spend it where it is most effective.

Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

#23

Post by sharts »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #2

I started off reading this article thinking "well, anyone who has ever maintained an open source project has almost certainly experienced the unending entitlement of users even when working for free". But after reading the article, I'm not surprised your users dislike you more after communicating with them... > I have already thought about this a great deal. I am not changing anything based on your email. > User can…

It’s for these reasons LLMs are going to chip away at silly subscriptions. When many projects get 70% of what the user needs and the maintainers aren’t willing or able to address what paying customers want…why bother paying anymore when you’ll soon be able to have just those bespoke features/fixes/integrations built yourself?

It seems to often boil down to the fact that paying customers are paying to solve a problem so they don’t need to deal with it. Whereas developers are more interested in writing code than solving said problems for customers.

Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

#24

Post by keiferski »

When I was in college, I worked at a bakery and actually made some long-term friends by talking to customers that came into the store. I later used this job experience to get an email support job, answering questions that users had about our software plugin. Never made any long-term friends with customers there, even if they emailed us once a month.

The difference is that email / online support has no “human downtime moments.” At the bakery, I usually would talk to people while we were waiting for their order to be finished heating up / cooking / etc. So there was a moment or two people standing around waiting, which naturally leads to a conversation. Or at least it did a decade ago when cellphones weren’t quite as omnipresent.

I wonder if having a monthly Zoom “open office hours” type thing would replicate some of this feeling in a software context. Probably not, but it might be better than just answering emails.

Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

#25

Post by zmgsabst »

philipswood wrote: post #19
speak_plainly wrote: post #13

Thinking about customer support as a ‘differentiator’ or a way to drive profit is depressing. You should simply strive to do what’s best for your customers. The sort of feedback you’re getting is golden and in the right hands can be put to use rather than be dismissed. Assuming that people who disagree with your pricing model just don’t understand how business works is really telling. You have to accept that your pri…

I find this: > but to say you’ve singularly thought through every problem in an armchair, in comparison with the distributed minds of the rest of us, is pretty arrogant. Somehow incredibly ironic when applied to you comment itself...

How so?

I’m missing the irony.

Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

#26

Post by hello15565 »

keiferski wrote: post #24

When I was in college, I worked at a bakery and actually made some long-term friends by talking to customers that came into the store. I later used this job experience to get an email support job, answering questions that users had about our software plugin. Never made any long-term friends with customers there, even if they emailed us once a month. The difference is that email / online support has no “human downtime…

There's also the fact that, email / online support leave records. You really don't want to leave a written record of you asking someone about their life, as when/if it gets audited - you can possibly get into trouble.

Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

#28

Post by dreambuffer »

Porkbun is an interesting case study for this support model. They reply to everything personally, and for me the important thing is not that I'm talking to a human, but that I'm not hearing corporatespeak.

I would even be happy to talk to a bot if it was fine-tuned to speak like a regular person instead of a corporate drone.

Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

#29

Post by dabluck »

munchler wrote: post #27

> I can think of exactly one customer in two years who was surprised that software costs money I think you meant "I can think of exactly one customer in two years who was NOT surprised that software costs money"?

Haha, I meant it the way I said it but I see what you're getting at. Perhaps it's better to say one person was genuinely surprised we work on the product all the time and it has to maintained, etc and was happy to support it since that was the case.

Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

#30

Post by designerarvid »

Sure, people want a personal human answer. But not as much as they want the correct answer.

Also, I think that we want to communicate with a company (Human or AI), and not a person, quite often. As you’re supporting a business transaction, not making friends. There’s a certain anonymity that comes with the business transaction. I wouldn’t ask for a refund from a friend.

Post reply on HN